Le Corbusier

Le Corbusier
Charles-douard Jeanneret
Le Corbusier

Le Corbusier (1933)
Born

October 6, 1887La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland

Died

August 27, 1965 (aged77)Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, France

Nationality Swiss / French

Work
Buildings

Villa Savoye, France

Notre Dame du Haut, France
Buildings in Chandigarh, India

Charles-douard Jeanneret, who chose to be known as Le Corbusier (French pronunciation:[l kbyzje]; October
6, 1887 August 27, 1965), was a Swiss architect, designer, urbanist, writer and painter, famous for being one of the
pioneers of what now is called Modern architecture or the International style. He was born in Switzerland and
became a French citizen in his thirties. His career spanned five decades, with his buildings constructed throughout
central Europe, India, Russia, and one each in North and South America.
He was a pioneer in studies of modern high design and was dedicated to providing better living conditions for the
residents of crowded cities. Later commentators criticized Le Corbusier's plan to raze part of Paris and replace it with
a grid of towers as soulless and arrogant, but his striking innovations have influenced every generation of architects
that followed him.[1]
Le Corbusier adopted his pseudonym in the 1920s, allegedly deriving it in part from the name of a distant ancestor,
"Lecorbsier." However, it appears to have been an earlier (and somewhat unkind) nickname, which he simply
decided to keep. It stems from the French for "the crow-like one".[2] In the absence of a first name, some have
suggested, pejoratively, that it indicates "a physical force as much as a human being," and brings to mind the French
verb courber, to bend.[1]
He was awarded the Frank P. Brown Medal in 1961.

Le Corbusier

Life
Early life and education, 18871913
He was born as Charles-douard Jeanneret-Gris in La Chaux-de-Fonds, a small city in Neuchtel canton in
north-western Switzerland, in the Jura mountains, just 5kilometres (3.1mi) across the border from France. He
attended a kindergarten that used Frbelian methods.
Le Corbusier was attracted to the visual arts and studied at the La-Chaux-de-Fonds Art School under Charles
L'Eplattenier, who had studied in Budapest and Paris. His architecture teacher in the Art School was the architect
Ren Chapallaz, who had a large influence on Le Corbusier's earliest houses.
In his early years he would frequently escape the somewhat provincial atmosphere of his hometown by traveling
around Europe. About 1907, he traveled to Paris, where he found work in the office of Auguste Perret, the French
pioneer of reinforced concrete. In 1908, He studied architecture in Vienna with Josef Hoffmann. Between October
1910 and March 1911, he worked near Berlin for the renowned architect Peter Behrens, where he might have met
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Walter Gropius. He became fluent in German. Both of these experiences proved
influential in his later career.
Later in 1911, he journeyed to the Balkans and visited Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey, filling sketchbooks with
renderings of what he saw, including many famous sketches of the Parthenon, whose forms he would later praise in
his work Vers une architecture (1923) ("Towards an Architecture," but usually translated into English as "Towards a
New Architecture").

Early career: the villas, 19141930

Le Corbusier taught at his old school in La-Chaux-de-Fonds during World War I, not returning to Paris until the war
was over. During these four years in Switzerland, he worked on theoretical architectural studies using modern
techniques.[3] Among these was his project for the "Dom-ino" House (19141915). This model proposed an open
floor plan consisting of concrete slabs supported by a minimal number of thin, reinforced concrete columns around
the edges, with a stairway providing access to each level on one side of the floor plan.
This design became the foundation for most of his architecture for the next ten years. Soon he would begin his own
architectural practice with his cousin, Pierre Jeanneret (18961967), a partnership that would last until 1940.
In 1918, Le Corbusier met the Cubist painter, Amde Ozenfant, in whom he recognised a kindred spirit. Ozenfant
encouraged him to paint, and the two began a period of collaboration. Rejecting Cubism as irrational and "romantic,"
the pair jointly published their manifesto, Aprs le cubisme and established a new artistic movement, Purism.
Ozenfant and Le Corbusier established the Purist journal L'Esprit nouveau. He was good friends with the Cubist
artist Fernand Lger.

Pseudonym adopted, 1920

In the first issue of the journal, in 1920, Charles-Edouard Jeanneret adopted Le Corbusier, an altered form of his
maternal grandfather's name, "Lecorbsier", as a pseudonym, reflecting his belief that anyone could reinvent
themselves. Some architectural historians claim that this pseudonym translates as "the raven-like one."[4] Adopting a
single name to identify oneself was in vogue by artists in many fields during that era, especially among those in
Paris.
The name "Le Corbusier" is a registered trademark (US Reg. 2073285) owned by the Fondation Le Corbusier and
licensed for the production of designs created by Charles Jeanneret alone and with his co-authors Charlotte Perriand
and Pierre Jeanneret.
Between 1918 and 1922, Le Corbusier built nothing, concentrating his efforts on Purist theory and painting. In 1922,
Le Corbusier and Ozenfant opened a studio in Paris at 35 rue de Svres.[3]

Le Corbusier
His theoretical studies soon advanced into several different single-family house models. Among these was the
Maison "Citrohan", a pun on the name of the French Citron automaker, for the modern industrial methods and
materials Le Corbusier advocated using for the house. Here, Le Corbusier proposed a three-floor structure, with a
double-height living room, bedrooms on the second floor, and a kitchen on the third floor. The roof would be
occupied by a sun terrace. On the exterior Le Corbusier installed a stairway to provide second-floor access from
ground level. Here, as in other projects from this period, he also designed the faades to include large expanses of
uninterrupted banks of windows. The house used a rectangular plan, with exterior walls that were not filled by
windows, left as white, stuccoed spaces. Le Corbusier and Jeanneret left the interior aesthetically spare, with any
movable furniture made of tubular metal frames. Light fixtures usually comprised single, bare bulbs. Interior walls
also were left white. Between 1922 and 1927, Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret designed many of these private
houses for clients around Paris. In Boulogne-sur-Seine and the 16th arrondissement of Paris, Le Corbusier and Pierre
Jeanneret designed and built the Villa Lipschitz, Maison Cook (see William Edwards Cook), Maison Planeix, and
the Maison La Roche/Albert Jeanneret, which now houses the Fondation Le Corbusier.

Personal relationships
While returning in 1929 from South America to Europe, Le Corbusier met entertainer and actress Josephine Baker
on board the ocean liner Luttia. Le Corbusier made several nude sketches of Baker. Soon after his return to France,
Le Corbusier married Yvonne Gallis, a dressmaker and fashion model. She died in 1957. Le Corbusier also had a
long extramarital affair with Swedish-American heiress Marguerite Tjader Harris.
Le Corbusier took French citizenship in 1930.[3]

Forays into urbanism

For a number of years French officials had been unsuccessful in dealing
with the squalor of the growing Parisian slums, and Le Corbusier sought
efficient ways to house large numbers of people in response to the urban
housing crisis. He believed that his new, modern architectural forms would
provide a new organizational solution that would raise the quality of life for
the lower classes. His Immeubles Villas (1922) was such a project that
called for large blocks of cell-like individual apartments stacked one on top
of the other, with plans that included a living room, bedrooms and kitchen,
as well as a garden terrace.
Not merely content with designs for a few housing blocks, soon Le
Corbusier moved into studies for entire cities. In 1922, he presented his
scheme for a "Contemporary City" for three million inhabitants (Ville
Contemporaine). The centerpiece of this plan was the group of sixty-story,
cruciform skyscrapers; steel-framed office buildings encased in huge curtain
walls of glass. These skyscrapers were set within large, rectangular
Portrait on Swiss ten francs banknote
park-like green spaces. At the center was a huge transportation hub, that on
different levels included depots for buses and trains, as well as highway
intersections, and at the top, an airport. He had the fanciful notion that commercial airliners would land between the
huge skyscrapers. Le Corbusier segregated pedestrian circulation paths from the roadways and glorified the use of
the automobile as a means of transportation. As one moved out from the central skyscrapers, smaller low-story,
zigzag apartment blocks (set far back from the street amid green space), housed the inhabitants. Le Corbusier hoped
that politically-minded industrialists in France would lead the way with their efficient Taylorist and Fordist strategies
adopted from American industrial models to reorganize society. As Norma Evenson has put it, "the proposed city
appeared to some an audacious and compelling vision of a brave new world, and to others a frigid megalomaniacally

Le Corbusier

scaled negation of the familiar urban ambient."[5]

In this new industrial spirit, Le Corbusier contributed to a new journal called L'Esprit Nouveau that advocated the
use of modern industrial techniques and strategies to transform society into a more efficient environment with a
higher standard of living on all socioeconomic levels. He forcefully argued that this transformation was necessary to
avoid the spectre of revolution that would otherwise shake society. His dictum, "Architecture or Revolution,"
developed in his articles in this journal, became his rallying cry for the book Vers une architecture (Toward an
Architecture, previously mistranslated into English as Towards a New Architecture), which comprised selected
articles he contributed to L'Esprit Nouveau between 1920 and 1923. In this book, Le Corbusier followed the
influence of Walter Gropius and reprinted several photographs of North American factories and grain elevators.[6]
Theoretical urban schemes continued to occupy Le Corbusier. He exhibited his "Plan Voisin," sponsored by another
famous automobile manufacturer, in 1925. In it, he proposed to bulldoze most of central Paris north of the Seine, and
replace it with his sixty-story cruciform towers from the Contemporary City, placed in an orthogonal street grid and
park-like green space. His scheme was met with criticism and scorn from French politicians and industrialists,
although they were favorable to the ideas of Taylorism and Fordism underlying Le Corbusier designs. Nonetheless,
it did provoke discussion concerning how to deal with the cramped, dirty conditions that enveloped much of the city.
In the 1930s, Le Corbusier expanded and reformulated his ideas on urbanism, eventually publishing them in La Ville
radieuse (The Radiant City) of 1935. Perhaps the most significant difference between the Contemporary City and the
Radiant City is that the latter abandons the class-based stratification of the former; housing is now assigned
according to family size, not economic position.[7] Some have read dark overtones into The Radiant City: from the
"astonishingly beautiful assemblage of buildings" that was Stockholm, for example, Le Corbusier saw only
frightening chaos and saddening monotony.[1] He dreamed of "cleaning and purging" the city, bringing "a calm and
powerful architecture"referring to steel, plate glass, and reinforced concrete. Though Le Corbusier's designs for
Stockholm did not succeed, later architects took his ideas and partly "destroyed" the city with them.[1]
La Ville radieuse also marks Le Corbusier's increasing dissatisfaction with capitalism and his turn to the right-wing
syndicalism of Hubert Lagardelle. During the Vichy regime, Le Corbusier received a position on a planning
committee and made designs for Algiers and other cities. The central government ultimately rejected his plans, and
after 1942 Le Corbusier withdrew from political activity.[8]
After World War II, Le Corbusier attempted to realize his urban
planning schemes on a small scale by constructing a series of "units"
(the housing block unit of the Radiant City) around France. The most
famous of these was the Unit d'Habitation of Marseilles (19461952).
In the 1950s, a unique opportunity to translate the Radiant City on a
grand scale presented itself in the construction of the Union Territory
Chandigarh, the new capital for the Indian states of Punjab and
Haryana and the first planned city in India. Le Corbusier designed
many administration buildings including a courthouse, parliament
building and a university. He also designed the general layout of the
city dividing it into sectors. Le Corbusier was brought on to develop
the plan of Albert Mayer.

High Court in Chandigarh, India

Le Corbusier

Death
Against his doctor's orders, on August 27, 1965, Le Corbusier went for a swim in the Mediterranean Sea at
Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, France. His body was found by bathers and he was pronounced dead at 11 a.m. It was
assumed that he may have suffered a heart attack. His death rites took place at the courtyard of the Louvre Palace on
September 1, 1965 under the direction of writer and thinker Andr Malraux, who was at the time France's Minister of
Culture. He was buried alongside his wife in the grave he had designated at Roquebrune.
Le Corbusier's death had a strong impact on the cultural and political world. Homages were paid worldwide and even
some of Le Corbusier's worst artistic enemies, such as the painter Salvador Dal, recognised his importance (Dal
sent a floral tribute). The President of the United States Lyndon B. Johnson said: "His influence was universal and
his works are invested with a permanent quality possessed by those of very few artists in our history". The Soviet
Union added, "Modern architecture has lost its greatest master". Japanese TV channels decided to broadcast,
simultaneously to the ceremony, his Museum in Tokyo, in what was at the time a unique media homage.
Visitors may find his grave site in the cemetery above Roquebrune-Cap-Martin in between Menton and Monaco in
southern France.
The Fondation Le Corbusier (or FLC) functions as his official Estate.[9] The U.S. copyright representative for the
Fondation Le Corbusier is the Artists Rights Society.[10]

Ideas
Five points of architecture
It was Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye (19291931) that most succinctly summed up his five points of architecture that
he had elucidated in the journal L'Esprit Nouveau and his book Vers une architecture, which he had been developing
throughout the 1920s. First, Le Corbusier lifted the bulk of the structure off the ground, supporting it by pilotis
reinforced concrete stilts. These pilotis, in providing the structural support for the house, allowed him to elucidate his
next two points: a free faade, meaning non-supporting walls that could be designed as the architect wished, and an
open floor plan, meaning that the floor space was free to be configured into rooms without concern for supporting
walls. The second floor of the Villa Savoye includes long strips of ribbon windows that allow unencumbered views
of the large surrounding yard, and which constitute the fourth point of his system. The fifth point was the roof garden
to compensate for the green area consumed by the building and replacing it on the roof. A ramp rising from ground
level to the third floor roof terrace allows for an architectural promenade through the structure. The white tubular
railing recalls the industrial "ocean-liner" aesthetic that Le Corbusier much admired. As if to put an exclamation
mark after Le Corbusier's homage to modern industry, the driveway around the ground floor, with its semicircular
path, measures the exact turning radius of a 1927 Citron automobile.

The Modulor
Le Corbusier explicitly used the golden ratio in his Modulor system for
the scale of architectural proportion. He saw this system as a
continuation of the long tradition of Vitruvius, Leonardo da Vinci's
"Vitruvian Man", the work of Leon Battista Alberti, and others who
used the proportions of the human body to improve the appearance and
function of architecture. In addition to the golden ratio, Le Corbusier
based the system on human measurements, Fibonacci numbers, and the
double unit.

Cover of Modulor and Modulor 2

He took Leonardo's suggestion of the golden ratio in human proportions to an extreme: he sectioned his model
human body's height at the navel with the two sections in golden ratio, then subdivided those sections in golden ratio

Le Corbusier
at the knees and throat; he used these golden ratio proportions in the Modulor system.
Le Corbusier's 1927 Villa Stein in Garches exemplified the Modulor system's application. The villa's rectangular
ground plan, elevation, and inner structure closely approximate golden rectangles.[11]
Le Corbusier placed systems of harmony and proportion at the centre of his design philosophy, and his faith in the
mathematical order of the universe was closely bound to the golden section and the Fibonacci series, which he
described as "rhythms apparent to the eye and clear in their relations with one another. And these rhythms are at the
very root of human activities. They resound in Man by an organic inevitability, the same fine inevitability which
causes the tracing out of the Golden Section by children, old men, savages, and the learned."[12]

Furniture
Corbusier said: "Chairs are architecture, sofas are bourgeois."
Le Corbusier began experimenting with furniture design in 1928 after inviting the architect, Charlotte Perriand, to
join his studio. His cousin, Pierre Jeanneret, also collaborated on many of the designs. Before the arrival of Perriand,
Le Corbusier relied on ready-made furniture to furnish his projects, such as the simple pieces manufactured by
Thonet, the company that manufactured his designs in the 1930s.
In 1928, Le Corbusier and Perriand began to put the expectations for furniture Le Corbusier outlined in his 1925
book L'Art Dcoratif d'aujourd'hui into practice. In the book he defined three different furniture types: type-needs,
type-furniture, and human-limb objects. He defined human-limb objects as: "Extensions of our limbs and adapted to
human functions that are type-needs and type-functions, therefore type-objects and type-furniture. The human-limb
object is a docile servant. A good servant is discreet and self-effacing in order to leave his master free. Certainly,
works of art are tools, beautiful tools. And long live the good taste manifested by choice, subtlety, proportion, and
harmony".
The first results of the collaboration were three chrome-plated tubular steel chairs designed for two of his projects,
The Maison la Roche in Paris and a pavilion for Barbara and Henry Church. The line of furniture was expanded for
Le Corbusier's 1929 Salon d'Automne installation, Equipment for the Home.
The most famous of these chairs are the now-iconic LC-1, LC-2, LC-3, and LC-4, originally titled "Basculant"
(LC-1), "Fauteuil grand confort, petit modle" (LC-2, "great comfort sofa, small model"), "Fauteil grand confort,
grand modle" (LC-3, "great comfort sofa, large model"), and "Chaise longue" (LC-4, "Long chair", English: "chaise
lounge").[13] The LC-2 and LC-3 are more colloquially referred to as the petit confort and grand confort
(abbreviation of full title, and due to respective sizes). The LC-2 (and similar LC-3) have been featured in a variety
of media, notably the Maxell "blown away" advertisement.[14]
In the year 1964, while Le Corbusier was still alive, Cassina S.p.A. of Milan acquired the exclusive worldwide rights
to manufacture his furniture designs. Today many copies exist, but Cassina is still the only manufacturer authorized
by the Fondation Le Corbusier; see US page [15].

Politics
Le Corbusier moved increasingly to the far right of French politics in the 1930s.[16] He associated with Georges
Valois and Hubert Lagardelle and briefly edited the syndicalist journal Prlude. In 1934, he lectured in Rome on
architecture, by invitation of Benito Mussolini. He sought out a position in urban planning in the Vichy regime and
received an appointment on a committee studying urbanism. He drew up plans for the redesign of Algiers in which
he criticized the perceived differences in living standards between Europeans and Africans in the city, describing a
situation in which "the civilised live like rats in holes" yet "the barbarians live in solitude, in well-being."[17] These
and plans for the redesign of other cities were ultimately ignored. After this defeat, Le Corbusier largely eschewed
politics.

Le Corbusier
Although the politics of Lagardelle and Valois included elements of fascism, anti-semitism, and ultra-nationalism,
Le Corbusier's own affiliation with these movements remains uncertain. In La Ville radieuse, he conceives an
essentially apolitical society, in which the bureaucracy of economic administration effectively replaces the state.[18]
Le Corbusier was heavily indebted to the thought of the nineteenth-century French utopians Saint-Simon and Charles
Fourier. There is a noteworthy resemblance between the concept of the unit and Fourier's phalanstery.[19] From
Fourier, Le Corbusier adopted at least in part his notion of administrative, rather than political, government.

Criticisms
Since his death, Le Corbusier's contribution has been hotly contested, as the architecture values and its
accompanying aspects within modern architecture vary, both between different schools of thought and among
practising architects.[20] At the level of building, his later works expressed a complex understanding of modernity's
impact, yet his urban designs have drawn scorn from critics. One social commentator writes that "Le Corbusier was
to architecture what Pol Pot was to social reform."[21]
Technological historian and architecture critic Lewis Mumford wrote in Yesterday's City of Tomorrow that the
extravagant heights of Le Corbusier's skyscrapers had no reason for existence apart from the fact that they had
become technological possibilities. The open spaces in his central areas had no reason for existence either, Mumford
wrote, since on the scale he imagined there was no motive during the business day for pedestrian circulation in the
office quarter. By "mating utilitarian and financial image of the skyscraper city to the romantic image of the organic
environment, Le Corbusier had, in fact, produced a sterile hybrid."
James Howard Kunstler, a member of the New Urbanism movement, has criticised Le Corbusier's approach to urban
planning as destructive and wasteful:
Le Corbusier [was] ... the leading architectural hoodoo-meister of Early High Modernism, whose 1925 Plan
Voisin for Paris proposed to knock down the entire Marais district on the Right Bank and replace it with rows
of identical towers set between freeways. Luckily for Paris, the city officials laughed at him every time he
came back with the scheme over the next forty years and Corb was nothing if not a relentless self-promoter.
Ironically and tragically, though, the Plan Voisin model was later adopted gleefully by post-World War Two
American planners, and resulted in such urban monstrosities as the infamous CabriniGreen housing projects
of Chicago and scores of things similar to it around the country.[22]
The public housing projects influenced by his ideas are seen by some as having had the effect of isolating poor
communities in monolithic high-rises and breaking the social ties integral to a community's development. One of his
most influential detractors has been Jane Jacobs, who delivered a scathing critique of Le Corbusier's urban design
theories in her seminal work The Death and Life of Great American Cities.

Le Corbusier

Influence
Le Corbusier was at his most influential in the sphere of urban planning, and was a founding member of the Congrs
International d'Architecture Moderne (CIAM).
One of the first to realize how the automobile would change human
agglomerations, Le Corbusier described the city of the future as
consisting of large apartment buildings isolated in a park-like setting
on pilotis. Le Corbusier's theories were adopted by the builders of
public housing in Western Europe and the United States. For the
design of the buildings themselves, Le Corbusier criticized any effort
at ornamentation. The large spartan structures in cities, but not 'of'
cities, have been widely criticized for being boring and unfriendly to
pedestrians.
Throughout the years, many architects worked for Le Corbusier in his
studio, and a number of them became notable in their own right,
including painter-architect Nadir Afonso, who absorbed Le Corbusier's
ideas into his own aesthetics theory. Lcio Costa's city plan of Braslia
and the industrial city of Zln planned by Frantiek Lydie Gahura in the
Czech Republic are notable plans based on his ideas, while the
Gustavo Capanema Palace, Rio de Janeiro
architect himself produced the plan for Chandigarh in India. Le
(Brazil).
Corbusier's thinking also had profound effects on the philosophy of
city planning and architecture in the Soviet Union, particularly in the Constructivist era.
Le Corbusier was heavily influenced by problems he saw in industrial cities at the turn of the century (that is, from
the 19th to the 20th century). He thought that industrial housing techniques led to crowding, dirtiness, and a lack of a
moral landscape. He was a leader of the modernist movement to create better living conditions and a better society
through housing concepts. Ebenezer Howard's Garden Cities of Tomorrow heavily influenced Le Corbusier and his
contemporaries.
Le Corbusier also harmonized and lent credence to the idea of space as a set of destinations which mankind moved
between, more or less continuously. He was therefore able to give credence and credibility to the automobile (as a
transporter); and most importantly to freeways in urban spaces. His philosophies were useful to urban real estate
development interests in the American Post World War II period because they justified and lent architectural and
intellectual support to the desire to destroy traditional urban space for high density high profit urban concentration,
both commercial and residential. Le Corbusiers ideas also sanctioned further destruction of traditional urban spaces
to build freeways that connected this new urbanism to low density, low cost (and highly profitable), suburban and
rural locales which were free to be developed as middle class single-family (dormitory) housing.
Notably missing from this scheme of movement were connectivity between isolated urban villages created for
lower-middle and working classes and other destination points in Le Corbusier's plan: suburban and rural areas, and
urban commercial centers. This was because as designed, the freeways traveled over, at, or beneath grade levels of
the living spaces of the urban poor (one modern example: the CabriniGreen housing project in Chicago). Such
projects and their areas, having no freeway exit ramps, cut-off by freeway rights-of-way, became isolated from jobs
and services concentrated at Le Corbusiers nodal transportation end points. As jobs increasingly moved to the
suburban end points of the freeways, urban village dwellers found themselves without convenient freeway access
points in their communities and without public mass transit connectivity that could economically reach suburban job
centers.
Very late in the Post-War period, suburban job centers found this to be such a critical problem (labor shortages) that
they, on their own, began sponsoring urban-to-suburban shuttle bus services between urban villages and suburban

Le Corbusier

job centers, to fill working class and lower-middle class jobs which had gone wanting, and which did not normally
pay the wages that car ownership required.
Le Corbusier deliberately created a myth about himself and was revered in his lifetime, and after death, by a
generation of followers who believed Le Corbusier was a prophet who could do no wrong. But in the 1950s the first
doubts began to appear, notably in some essays by his greatest admirers such as James Stirling and Colin Rowe, who
denounced as catastrophic his ideas on the city. Later critics revealed his technical incompetence as an architect. In
his book Arme du Salut, Brian Brace Taylor went into great detail about Le Corbusier's Machiavellian activities to
create this commission for himself, his many ill-judged design decisions about building technologies, and the
sometimes absurd solutions he then proposed.

Fondation Le Corbusier
The Fondation Le Corbusier is a private foundation and archive honoring the work of architect Le Corbusier
(18871965). It operates Maison La Roche, a museum located in the 16th arrondissement at 8-10, square du Dr
Blanche, Paris, France, which is open daily except Sunday. As of June 2008, the Maison La Roche is temporarily
closed for renovation.
The Fondation Le Corbusier was established in 1968. It now owns Maison La Roche and Maison Jeanneret (which
form the foundation's headquarters), as well as the apartment occupied by Le Corbusier from 1933-1965 at rue
Nungesser et Coli in Paris 16e, and the "Small House" he built for his parents in Corseaux on the shores of Lac
Leman (1924).
Maison La Roche and Maison Jeanneret (192324), also known as the La Roche-Jeanneret house, is a pair of
semi-detached houses that was Corbusier's third commission in Paris. They are laid out at right angles to each other,
with iron, concrete, and blank, white facades setting off a curved two-story gallery space. Maison La Roche is now a
museum containing about 8,000 original drawings, studies and plans by Le Corbusier (in collaboration with Pierre
Jeanneret from 19221940), as well as about 450 of his paintings, about 30 enamels, about 200 other works on
paper, and a sizable collection of written and photographic archives. It describes itself as the world's largest
collection of Le Corbusier drawings, studies, and plans.[23] [24]

Major buildings and projects

1905: Villa Fallet, La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland
1908: Stotzer House, 6, Chemin de Pouillerel, la Chaux-de-Fonds,
Switzerland.
1912: Villa Jeanneret-Perret, La Chaux-de-Fonds [25]
1916: Villa Schwob, La Chaux-de-Fonds
1922: Villa Besnus (Ker-Ka-R), Vaucresson, Paris, France
1922: Ozenfant House and Studio, Vaucresson, Paris. ( much
altered.)
1923: Villa La Roche/Villa Jeanneret, Paris
1924: Pavillon de L'Esprit Nouveau, Paris (destroyed)
1924: Quartiers Modernes Frugs, Pessac, France
1925: Villa Jeanneret, Paris
1926: Villa Cook, Boulogne-sur-Seine, France
1926: Villa Ternisien, 5, Allee des Pins, Boulogne-sur-Seine, Paris.
( Block of apartments built over the house.)
1927: Villa Stein, Garches, Paris.
1927: Pleinex House, 24, Bis Boulevard Massena, Paris 13e.

The Open Hand Monument is one of numerous

projects in Chandigarh, India, designed by Le
Corbusier

Le Corbusier

10

1927: Villas at Weissenhof Estate, Stuttgart, Germany

1928: Villa Savoye, Poissy-sur-Seine, France View on the map [26]
1929: Cit du Refuge, Arme du Salut, Paris, France
1930: Pavillon Suisse, Cit Universitaire, Paris
1930: Maison Errazuriz, Chile
1930: Las Nubes, house of Uruguayan novelist Enrique Amorim
(Salto, Uruguay)
1931: Palace of the Soviets, Moscow, USSR (project)
1931: I2, Geneva, Switzerland View on the map [27]

National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo,

Japan

1933: Tsentrosoyuz, Moscow, USSR

1936: Palace of Ministry of National Education and Public Health,
Rio de Janeiro (as a consultant to Lucio Costa, Oscar Niemeyer and
others)
1938: The "Cartesian" sky-scraper (project)
1945: Usine Claude et Duval, Saint-Di-des-Vosges, France
19471952: Unit d'Habitation, Marseille, France View on the map
[28]
, History of the Prefabricated Home [29]
1948: Curutchet House, La Plata, Argentina
19491952: United Nations headquarters, New York City
(Consultant)
19501954: Chapelle Notre Dame du Haut, Ronchamp, France
View on the map [30]

Centre Le Corbusier (Heidi Weber Museum) in

Zurich-Seefeld (Zrichhorn)

1951: Cabanon de vacances, Roquebrune-Cap-Martin

1951: Maisons Jaoul, Neuilly-sur-Seine, France
1951: Mill Owners' Association Building, villa Sarabhai and villa
Schodan, Ahmedabad, India
1952: Unit d'Habitation of Nantes-Rez, Nantes, France View on
the map [31]

A governmental building, Chandigarh, India

19521959: Buildings in Chandigarh, India

1952: Palace of Justice (Chandigarh)
1952: Museum and Gallery of Art (Chandigarh)
1953: Secretariat Building (Chandigarh)
1953: Governor's Palace (Chandigarh)
1955: Palace of Assembly (Chandigarh)
1956: Shodan House
1959: Government College of Art (GCA) and the Chandigarh
College of Architecture(CCA) (Chandigarh)
1956: Museum at Ahmedabad, Ahmedabad, India
1956: Saddam Hussein Gymnasium, Baghdad, Iraq

Villa Savoye

1957: Unit d'Habitation of Briey en Fort, France

1957: National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo
1957: Maison du Brsil, Cit Universitaire, Paris
19571960: Sainte Marie de La Tourette, near Lyon, France (with Iannis Xenakis)
1957: Unit d'Habitation of Berlin-Charlottenburg, Flatowallee 16, Berlin View on the map [32]
1957: Unit d'Habitation of Meaux, France
1958: Philips Pavilion, Brussels, Belgium (with Iannis Xenakis) (destroyed) at the 1958 World Expositon

Le Corbusier

1961: Center for Electronic Calculus, Olivetti, Milan, Italy

1961: Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
1963: House of Man, Zurich, Switzerland
19641969: Firminy-Vert

1964: Unit d'Habitation of Firminy, France

1966: Stadium Firminy-Vert
1965: Maison de la culture de Firminy-Vert
1969: Church of Saint-Pierre, Firminy, France (built posthumously and completed under Jos Oubrerie's
guidance in 2006)
1967: Heidi Weber Museum (Centre Le Corbusier), Zurich, Switzerland

Major written works

1918: Aprs le cubisme (After Cubism), with Amde Ozenfant
1923: Vers une architecture (Towards an Architecture) (frequently mistranslated as "Towards a New
Architecture")
1925: Urbanisme (Urbanism)
1925: La Peinture moderne (Modern Painting), with Amde Ozenfant

1925: L'Art dcoratif d'aujourd'hui (The Decorative Arts of Today)

1931: Premier clavier de couleurs (First Color Keyboard)
1935: Aircraft
1935: La Ville radieuse (The Radiant City)
1942: Charte d'Athnes (Athens Charter)
1943: Entretien avec les tudiants des coles d'architecture (A Conversation with Architecture Students)
1945: Les Trios stablishments Humains (The Three Human Establishments)
1948: Le Modulor (The Modulor)
1953: Le Poeme de l'Angle Droit (The Poem of the Right Angle)
1955: Le Modulor 2 (The Modulor 2)
1959: Deuxime clavier de couleurs (Second Colour Keyboard)
1966: Le Voyage d'Orient (The Voyage to the East)

Quotations
"You employ stone, wood, and concrete, and with these materials you build houses and palaces: that is
construction. Ingenuity is at work. But suddenly you touch my heart, you do me good. I am happy and I say: 'This
is beautiful.' That is Architecture. Art enters in..." (Vers une architecture, 1923)
"Architecture is the masterly, correct, and magnificent play of masses brought together in light."
"Space and light and order. Those are the things that men need just as much as they need bread or a place to
sleep."
"The house is a machine for living in." (Vers une architecture, 1923)
"It is a question of building which is at the root of the social unrest of today: architecture or revolution." (Vers une
architecture, 1923)
"Modern life demands, and is waiting for, a new kind of plan, both for the house and the city." (Vers une
architecture, 1923)
"The 'Styles' are a lie." (Vers une architecture, 1923)
"Architecture or revolution. Revolution can be avoided." (Vers une architecture, 1923)

11

Le Corbusier

Memorials
Le Corbusier's portrait was featured on the 10 Swiss francs banknote, pictured with his distinctive eyeglasses.
The following place-names carry his name:

Place Le Corbusier, Paris, near the site of his atelier on the Rue de Svres.
Le Corbusier Boulevard, Laval, Quebec, Canada.
Place Le Corbusier in his hometown of La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland.
Le Corbusier Street in the partido of Malvinas Argentinas, Buenos Aires Province, Argentina.
Le Corbusier Street in Le Village Parisien of Brossard, Quebec, Canada.
Le Corbusier Promenade, a promenade along the water at Roquebrune-Cap-Martin.

References
[1] Dalrymple, Theodore. 'The Architect as Totalitarian: Le Corbusiers baleful influence' (http:/ / www. city-journal. org/ 2009/
19_4_otbie-le-corbusier. html), City Journal, Autumn 2009, vol. 19, no. 4
[2] Brewers Dictionary of 20th Century Phrase and Fable
[3] Choay, Franoise, le corbusier (1960), pp. 10-11. George Braziller, Inc. ISBN 0-8076-0104-7.
[4] Gans, Deborah, The Le Corbusier Guide (2006), p. 31. Princeton Architectural Press. ISBN 1-56898-539-8.
[5] Evenson, Norma. Le Corbusier: The Machine and the Grand Design. George Braziller, Pub: New York, 1969 (p.7).
[6] "American Colossus: the Grain Elevator 1843-1943" (http:/ / www. american-colossus. com/ ). Colossus Books. 2009. .
[7] Robert Fishman, Urban Utopias in the Twentieth Century: Ebenezer Howard, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Le Corbusier (Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press, 1982), 231.
[8] Fishman, 244-246
[9] "Fondation Le Corbusier's English Version Website" (http:/ / www. fondationlecorbusier. asso. fr/ fondationlc_us. htm). .
[10] "Most frequently requested artists list of the Artists Rights Society" (http:/ / arsny. com/ requested. html). .
[11] Le Corbusier, The Modulor, p. 35, as cited in Padovan, Richard, Proportion: Science, Philosophy, Architecture (1999), p. 320. Taylor &
Francis. ISBN 0-419-22780-6: "Both the paintings and the architectural designs make use of the golden section."
[12] Ibid. The Modulor pp.25, as cited in Padovan's Proportion: Science, Philosophy, Architecture pp.316
[13] Le Corbusier Classics LC2, LC3 and LC4 Get Colorful, Courtesy Of Cassina. (http:/ / ifitshipitshere. blogspot. com/ 2010/ 06/
le-corbusier-classics-lc2-lc3-and-lc4. html) 2010-07-27
[14] Lc2 Chair in famous "blown away" Maxell Advertisement (http:/ / corbustier. com/ lc2-chair-in-famous-blown-away-maxell-advertisment/ )
[15] http:/ / www. cassinausa. com/ corbusier. html
[16] Antliff, Mark, Avant-Garde Fascism: The Mobilization of Myth, Art, and Culture in France, 19091939. Duke University Press, 2007, p.
111.
[17] Celik, Zeynep, Urban Forms and Colonial Confrontations: Algiers under French Rule, University of California Press, 1997, p. 4.
[18] Fishman, 228
[19] Peter Serenyi, Le Corbusier, Fourier, and the Monastery of Ema. The Art Bulletin 49, no. 4 (1967): 282.
[20] Holm, Ivar (2006). Ideas and Beliefs in Architecture and Industrial design: How attitudes, orientations, and underlying assumptions shape
the build environment. Oslo School of Architecture and Design. ISBN 82-547-0174-1.
[21] Dalrymple 2009
[22] "Kunstler on Cities of the Future" (http:/ / www. kunstler. com/ mags_cities_of_the_future. html). Kunstler.com. . Retrieved 2010-03-10.
[23] Fondation Le Corbusier (http:/ / www. fondationlecorbusier. asso. fr/ )
[24] Paris.org entry (http:/ / www. paris. org/ Musees/ Corbusier/ info. html)
[25] http:/ / www. maisonblanche. ch
[26] http:/ / maps. google. com/ maps/ ms?ie=UTF8& hl=en& msa=0& msid=103295916315134076315. 00045eab933932056ccb4& ll=48.
924256,2. 02841& spn=0. 001472,0. 002414& t=h& z=19
[27] http:/ / maps. google. com/ maps/ ms?ie=UTF8& hl=en& msa=0& msid=103295916315134076315. 00045eab933932056ccb4& ll=46.
200229,6. 156464& spn=0. 0031,0. 004828& t=h& z=18
[28] http:/ / maps. google. com/ maps/ ms?ie=UTF8& hl=en& msa=0& msid=103295916315134076315. 00045eab933932056ccb4& ll=43.
261183,5. 396401& spn=0,359. 995172& t=h& z=18& layer=c& cbll=43. 26125,5. 397412& panoid=gSIrayV3K7aTziB_K1KGZQ&
cbp=12,270. 87750318263215,,0,-5. 777772317930098
[29] http:/ / www. housing. com/ categories/ homes/ history-prefabricated-home/ unit%C3%A9-dhabitation-le-corbusier. html
[30] http:/ / maps. google. com/ maps/ ms?ie=UTF8& hl=en& msa=0& msid=103295916315134076315. 00045eab933932056ccb4& ll=47.
705849,6. 62143& spn=0. 012057,0. 019312& z=16
[31] http:/ / maps. google. com/ maps/ ms?ie=UTF8& hl=en& msa=0& msid=103295916315134076315. 00045eab933932056ccb4& ll=47.
188515,-1. 568384& spn=0. 001522,0. 002414& t=h& z=19

12

Le Corbusier
[32] http:/ / maps. google. com/ maps/ ms?ie=UTF8& hl=en& msa=0& msid=103295916315134076315. 00045eab933932056ccb4& ll=52.
510096,13. 244179& spn=0. 002726,0. 004828& t=h& z=18

Further reading
Nicholas Fox Weber, Le Corbusier: A Life, Alfred A. Knopf, 2008, ISBN 0-375-41043-0
Marco Venturi, Le Corbusier Algiers Plans, research available on planum.net (http://www.planum.net/archive/
lec.htm)
Behrens, Roy R. (2005). COOK BOOK: Gertrude Stein, William Cook and Le Corbusier. Dysart, Iowa: Bobolink
Books. ISBN 0-9713244-1-7.
Nama Jornod and Jean-Pierre Jornod, Le Corbusier (Charles Edouard Jeanneret), catalogue raisonn de loeuvre
peint, Skira, 2005, ISBN 88-7624-203-1
Eliel, Carol S. (2002). L'Esprit Nouveau: Purism in Paris, 1918 - 1925. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. ISBN
0-8109-6727-8
Frampton, Kenneth. (2001). Le Corbusier. London, Thames and Hudson.
H. Allen Brooks: Le Corbusier's Formative Years: Charles-Edouard Jeanneret at La Chaux-de-Fonds, Paperback
Edition, University of Chicago Press, 1999, ISBN 0-226-07582-6

External links

Fondation Le Corbusier (http://www.fondationlecorbusier.asso.fr/) - Official site

Le Corbusier and Villa Cook (http://www.bobolinkbooks.com/BALLAST/CookStein.html)
Reflections on Brutalist Architecture in East London (http://thethirdestate.net/2009/05/brutal-but-true)
Podcast: Kenneth Frampton on Le Corbusier (http://simplycharly.com/podcasts/
kenneth-frampton-on-le-corbusier)
Images of the Ministry of National Education and Public Health, Rio de Janeiro (http://www.fredcamper.com/
A/Accretions/AC005/index.html)
Le Corbusier's projects in a map (http://proyecto.localizarq.es/etiquetas/corbusier-le/)
The Shape Of Things That Came: Tim Benton's Analysis Of Le Corbusier's Audacious Designs (http://
simplycharly.com/lecorbusier/tim_benton_interview.htm)
Le Corbusier in Artfacts.Net (http://www.artfacts.net/index.php/pageType/artistInfo/artist/2312)
Corbusier's Working Lifestyle: 'Working with Corbusier' (http://www.archsociety.com/e107_plugins/content/
content.php?content.24)
Video: Sector 1 Chandigarh, India (http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=iq8T_BzXTPE)
Artists Rights Society, Le Corbusier's U.S. Copyright Representatives (http://www.arsny.com)
Model for the Villa Chimanbhai (http://cca.qc.ca/en/collection/9-le-corbusier-villa-chimanbhai)
Proportional Systems in the architecture of Le Corbusier (http://www.benflatman.com/Le Corbusier/Le
Corbusier.html)

13

Article Sources and Contributors

Article Sources and Contributors

Le Corbusier Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=425592513 Contributors: 130.216.191.xxx, 203.96.111.xxx, 386-DX, 6SJ7, 83d40m, ABF, ALE!, Acad Ronin, Aiman
abmajid, Alainr345, Alansohn, Ale jrb, Alex S, Alex earlier account, Amadan1, Anders.Warga, AntOnTrack, Antipodean Contributor, Ap, Aspects, Atmamatma, Aude, AverageGuy, Aykantspel,
B, BD2412, Baa, Bajiao, Bassetsc, Beyond My Ken, Bill Thayer, Binksternet, Bird of paradox, Blahm, Bobblewik, Bobo192, Bobsky, Bodnotbod, Bonadea, BoondockArchitect, Brosi,
Cactus.man, Cagedcalcium, Caiaffa, Calton, Campolongo, Cantiorix, Carloslermaelvira, Carlsmith, Carter, Casimir, Casty, Caveman1949, Cbc123, Ccarlini, Choess, Chorrocks, Chovain,
Chowells, Chreod, Chriswaterguy, Chwe, Clubmarx, Cnbrb, Colinclarksmith, CommonsDelinker, Conflatuman, Conversion script, Costela, Csh21, Curiousa, CyrilB, D6, DARTH SIDIOUS 2,
DVD R W, DVdm, Daderot, Dancter, DavidFarmbrough, Davis21Wylie, Dbarnes99, Ddddbbbb, Delirium, Demflan, DennisJOBrien@yahoo.com, Deor, Deputyduck, Der Golem, Dinopup, Dirt,
Dnkidd, DocWatson42, Docomomo, Docu, Dogears, Dominus, Doulos Christos, DrZaius, Drowneded, Dysprosia, Earle Martin, EdBever, Edton, Ekoontz, El C, Elcarmean, Elekhh, Elliotb2,
Elockid, Emeraldcityserendipity, Emhoo, Enigmaman, Epbr123, Erebus555, Ewulp, Fanghong, Favonian, FeloniousMonk, Foroa, Fredcamper, FrenchIsAwesome, Fuhghettaboutit, Fyver528, F,
Gabbe, Gaius Cornelius, Garion96, Gary King, Gene Nygaard, Gene s, Georgefondue, Gerardchic, Gergis, Getafix, GlassFET, Gogo Dodo, GoingBatty, Goldenlane, Graham87, Grandmaster,
GreatInDayton, Grenavitar, Ground Zero, Gwguffey, Hans Dunkelberg, Harrytorresph, Hayabusa future, Heron, Hillel, Hoary, Ian Spackman, Iang77, Ida Shaw, Immanuel Giel, IndianGeneralist,
Intersofia, Ioana manea, Iphilblue, JYOuyang, JackofOz, Jacobbarssbailey, Jareha, Jfire, Jim, Jim n joe, Jleon, Jlg3926, Johnuniq, Joke137, Jonas August, Jonathan.s.kt, Jonnyyyy1234, Jossi,
Julia Rossi, Juliancolton, Jumbuck, Junes, Jweiss11, KRS, Karel Kouba, Katimawan2005, Kbi911, Kelisi, Kevin Forsyth, Kingsleyj, Kipala, Kiyabg, Larryisgood, Laurens-af, Learn Eggs,
LeedsKing, Lemeza Kosugi, Lexi Marie, LibraryLion, Liftarn, Lights, Lithoderm, Lockley, Look2See1, Lord Pistachio, Lostleaf, Lowellian, Lycurgus, MK8, Maackers, MadGeographer,
Maelnuneb, Mafmafmaf, Mandarax, Mariam ellala, Matve, Maxatl, Mcginnly, Mecanismo, Meepok, Megland, Merbabu, Mholland, Mike Rosoft, Mike hayes, Milo99, Moderndesigninmind,
Modernist, Monegasque, Moniquestern, Mqa, Mr Snoidy Toy, Muzi, Mveers, Nach0king, Natalie Erin, Nbarth, Neilbeach, Nerval, Netsnipe, Newageliving, Nikkul, Ninly, Nishantsharma87,
Nposs, Oatmeal batman, Olivier, Owenhatherley, P0mbal, Paul venter, Permaculture, Peter E. James, Peterklevy, Petermalewski, Pethan, Pharaoh of the Wizards, Polylerus, Ppapadeas,
ProhibitOnions, Pseybold, Psychofish, Puckly, Qdiderot, Quadell, Rajah, Rama, Raven in Orbit, Reaverdrop, RebelGirl, Reedy, RenegadeAngel, Rich Farmbrough, Rick Block, Rick lightburn,
Rjwilmsi, RobertG, Roland zh, Rrburke, SDC, SanGatiche, Sandstein, Sanket ar, Sasajid, Ser Amantio di Nicolao, Sharpner, Shoeofdeath, Sicilarch, Siedasi, Skarebo, Slakr, Smeira,
Smokychimp, Snalwibma, Snappy, Solipsist, Some jerk on the Internet, Sonett72, Soosed, Sophus Bie, Spark, Sparkit, Sry85, Stakhanov, Steffess, Stephencdickson, SteveHopson,
Stevenmitchell, Stillwaterising, Stippy, Straits-mongrel, Subsume, Synthetik, THB, TTKK, Takahiro05274, TastyPoutine, Tauheed, Tevus, Texperience, TheSoundAndTheFury, Tide rolls,
Tommy2010, Tpbradbury, Underwaterbuffalo, Unfree, Unyoyega, Versus22, Villim 85, Viskonsas, Vulture19, Wanderer77, WikiSpaceboy, Wikinaut, WojPob, Xyzzyva, Yanksox, Yerpo, Yohan
euan o4, Yossarian4010, Zundark, 508 anonymous edits

Image Sources, Licenses and Contributors

File:Le Corbusier 1933.JPG Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Le_Corbusier_1933.JPG License: unknown Contributors: oknd
Image:CHF10 8 front.jpg Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:CHF10_8_front.jpg License: Public Domain Contributors: 3122WIKI, Mattes, Scartol, Schutz, Szajci
File:Chandigarh High Court.jpg Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Chandigarh_High_Court.jpg License: Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 2.0 Contributors: gb
pandey from chandigarh, India
Image:Modulor-Modulor2.jpg Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Modulor-Modulor2.jpg License: unknown Contributors: Moe Epsilon, Sherool, Solipsist
File:MESP4.jpg Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:MESP4.jpg License: Public Domain Contributors: Imagens AMB
File:Chandigarh Monument.jpg Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Chandigarh_Monument.jpg License: Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0 Contributors:
Aviad2001, FlickreviewR, Indianhilbilly, Mattes, Pruneau, Roland zh
File:National museum of western art01 1920.jpg Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:National_museum_of_western_art01_1920.jpg License: Creative Commons
Attribution 2.5 Contributors: 663highland
File:Zrich - Seefeld - Corbusier - Heidi Weber Museum IMG 1552.JPG Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Zrich_-_Seefeld_-_Corbusier_-_Heidi_Weber_Museum_IMG_1552.JPG License: Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0 Contributors:
User:Roland zh
File:Secretariat.jpg Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Secretariat.jpg License: Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 2.0 Contributors: duncid
File:VillaSavoye.jpg Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:VillaSavoye.jpg License: Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0 Contributors: User:Valueyou

License
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported
http:/ / creativecommons. org/ licenses/ by-sa/ 3. 0/

14